Open Letter to Michael Guen’s Group

The following letter was written to all affiliates of Michael Guen’s Group in order for new members to realize the real purpose of the group. We of course did know that it would not work on long term members of the group because they are too deeply indoctrinated. Nevertheless, we hoped to reach also ex-members who are not deeply involved anymore to come forward and contribute to this blog:

October 5, 2013

Dear Member and Ex-Member of Michael Guen’s Group,

It took me a while before I realized that I really wanted to write this letter to you. Some members of Michael’s group briefly met me, but I guess most of you just know me from Michael’s emails or from members close to him. I would like to offer you an open communication in order to explain my perspective on the departure of my girlfriend Ruth. She was a member of the group for more than 10 years. By now, she and I have probably been demonized by Michael or other group members. Anyway, in the spirit of openness (which Michael is often encouraging), I would like to ask you to read this message very carefully and please come to your own conclusions about what I am writing here.

I met Ruth in August 2012 on an online dating website. We did fall in love very fast and our first few weeks were lighthearted and fun. I did know from the beginning that she lived with her bagua teacher and two other fellow students. I thought back than that this was a very unusual arrangement for learning martial arts. Over the next few months I found out that she spent $750 per month just for his teaching and the acupuncture sessions. It became clear to me that she must go into debt because she made only $2,200 and she had to spend another $940 for rent (for only one room in Michael Guen’s house). That would leave her only $505 to live on. I did not understand what she was getting for her money. In addition to the paid personal acupuncture sessions, she attended the 3 hour women’s group on Thursdays. After meeting the group together with Michael a few times, it became obvious for me how submissively dependent she was on him. We had many fights around that topic. I could not understand why Ruth was giving her life to Michael Guen. Most of you are very well informed about those fights because she confessed them in group sessions (as encouraged by Michael Guen).

All of that was not understandable to me. As Ruth put it, I could not understand and I was not a believer. Bear with me here – I know that is very hard for you to read, but please hear me out. We reached a certain breaking point in our relationship. She and I were thinking to go our separate ways. I was realizing that the only major stress point we have is her involvement with her group and I was ready to make an extra effort to get a deeper understanding about the nature of Michael and his group. I browsed the internet and I stumbled over other people’s stories which sounded very similar to our own. All of these stories had one common theme and I was stunned when I realized that she was in fact in a destructive cult. Don’t panic here – stay with me and let me explain further. Then you can come to you own conclusions. Remember this is my perspective and you are entitled to have your own. I don’t want to define the term destructive cult here but you can follow this link to a book which explains in easy to read terms what destructive cults are and how they work. In addition, I want you to evaluate your own involvement to see if you are in a destructive cult. The following questionnaire can help you analyze if you are in such an organization: http://www.gospelassemblyfree.com/facts/questionaire.htm

As you may have guessed, I was very disturbed after I came to that conclusion but I was also relieved. Relieved because finally I could understand why she acted the way she acted and why she was spending so much money on this. Now I needed to find a way to transfer this knowledge to her and my hope was that she would be able to come to the same conclusions. I found on the internet a former neurosurgeon named Dr. David McDermott who had been 10 years in a destructive cult. I bought his online book in which he writes about how destructive cults work and operate. I was blown away how many similarities I found to her circumstances. I called David the next day after I was done reading his book. He called me back in a few hours after I left him message. I explained to him in two hours how I see her involvement in the group and David told me that he will call me in a few days because it would take him some time to study the material on Michael Guen’s website and the other information I gave him.

To make a long story short, he came to the conclusion that Michael’s group was a destructive cult. David told me also that in order to get my girlfriend out of this group she has to agree to not see the group for one week. At this point she was already agreeing on her own free will to not see the group for 3 weeks in order to work on our relationship. Like you probably guessed, David and I did an intervention with her. The nature of an intervention is pretty simple. The person who receives the intervention is basically presented with facts about destructive cults in form from of videos, books, etc. This had to be done on my girlfriend’s own terms without any pressure. She had to come to her own conclusions and if the decision would be “No, I am not in a destructive cult,” then I had to accept that and move on. Only after 5 days Ruth realized on her own that she was in fact in a destructive cult. She decided to cease all contact to her group and also to change her phone and email address. It was very hard for her to realize that she wasted 10 years of her life and $55,000, but she is in a much happier space now. She feels relieved and grateful to be no longer under Michael Guen’s influence.

So that’s it in a nutshell. You made it to the end and I am open to answering any questions that you might have as an individual, not from Michael Guen’s perspective. Please ask yourself the question if Michael’s group is a destructive cult. What do you have to lose?

I bet by now you have some other questions yourself like these:

When is finally the big coming out? First it was in October 2012, then January, April, and July 24th 2013.

Why are we not online?

Where is all the content of the website he promised? ·

Will my document ever being published, the one I which worked so hard and spend all that money to create?

Is it all fake? Is it all about money?

Why am I still working for free like his fiancé?

Will I ever make any money on this?

Is all that money I am spending on Michael Guen really worth it?

Is he influencing me in my decisions but claiming I have a free will?

Is he taking advantage of me?

Have other members had sex with Michael? Is he really a victim?

Why I am forced to recruit new women to stay in the group?

Why am I encouraged to have personal acupuncture sessions with him?

Please study the attached material to get answers to these questions and if you don’t trust me as a source, search the Web and educate yourself. A good place to start is Steve Hassan’s website http://www.freedomofmind.com.

4 Responses

I only worked with Michael’s group for 8 months. In the beginning it felt inspiring, though my gut instinct was putting up red flags, which I ignored.
My female teacher , one of his longest disciples, was embarrassingly submissive to him. After deciding to be her student, we went to meet with Michael for his approval, which felt completely strange.

In Michael’s office, he questioned our motives in her training me. The deal was that she couldn’t progress to a black belt in the Bagua Quan style he taught, until she trained another woman to a black belt level. I told her I had not money, and she said that was OK because my contribution was giving her the opportunity to reach her black belt.

Sitting in the office with Michael – everything felt like a performance. He asked us why we didn’t want to just have informal training sessions with just the two of us, not connected to Wassah Inst. and his overview? Why did we think we could be the LINEAGE carriers, and be the ONES who brought back the TRUE FEMININE WISDOM? (sounds a little like Frodo, or Neo in the Matrix – -“Are you the ONES”?)

Part of me wanted to play along and sign up for the fantasy – OK – maybe we’re the ONES and lets just see.
But most of me was pissed off that he was putting words into my mouth and making the situation so grandiose. Inside myself I was saying, “well, I’d rather just have informal trainings with ——“. But I felt I’d let my friend down if I didn’t give her an opportunity to reach her black belt. So I just went along with it.

I trained with her for 8 months. We had fun together and I got stronger. But two things continued to be OFF.
1. She continued to show personality traits which I’d never noticed before – namely deep shame and low self-worth connected to Michael’s opinion of her. He was constantly humiliating her in the larger core group and taking away her “special tasks” that he’d given her, saying she was screwing things up and not ready to hold that responsibility. And the responsibilities he gave to her (working for free for him) were menial – they were silly. Anyone could do them.
2. The FREE training I agreed to do to help my friend reach a black belt suddenly turned into a $50 per month commitment, and buying all three of Michael’s books was required, and then there was more money requested. Then…. MIchael, through my teacher, started shaming me for expecting something for nothing!

After many months Michael invited me to put together a group of women. He had a class going for Women’s work. I guess he had no one signing up because he told me if I just got my group together he’d teach us.

I totally fell for this one! I was excited to gather my women friends, former students and clients together to have a special private group with him. This I did.

Unfortunately – in the first group, I noticed that of the 7 of us, he was particularly interested in the two youngest and prettiest women. And these two women seemed to, as the weeks passed, become more enamored by him.
After 6 or so meetings, the older women in the group left disgusted. We were disgusted by Michael’s arrogance, narcissism and manipulations. To my great sadness the younger women stayed and one of them is now engaged to Michael! And he wants to have a child with her.
The guilt I feel is tremendous. But I have to let go and remember that she is an adult and for some reason, she is choosing this experience. I’m sure Michael is on his best behavior with her, making sure he gives her just enough power so she feels free. But he’ll surely tighten his control as the years pass.

After I left the group, I had a huge falling out with my female teacher. She called me a narcissist and that I’m endangering women’s lives by holding women’s circles and teaching my gifts without having attained mastery.

I was blown away. She was describing Michael not me! So I knew that she had been told by Michael that this is what I was doing and she was regurgitating it to me.

I confronted my female friend/teacher and told her what say about the group. She defended Michael and the group. Eventually she told me we couldn’t be in each others lives anymore. This is how Michael isolates his disciples from any dissenting voices about him. He feeds them with lies and brainwashes them against those who truly love them.

Years have passed and I haven’t thought about any of them since, until Ruth called me and we got together for lunch. I was so grateful that she was free! And we had a good talk about what we saw and experienced. Since, I’ve called some of the other women who I’d recruited for the group and had left working with Michael. One of them described his sexual manipulation towards her, which Ruth had also had happen. This angered me tremendously, and I now am even more concerned for my former student who is engaged to him.

I encourage any former pupils of Michael’s to contribute to ending the abuse by writing your experience here!
Thank you Ruth and Karl for your courage and strength and love.

It was clear to me after two meetings with Michael that he was not an appropriate leader. He insulted my friend who had been in the group for a long time and other people in the group and told me he wanted to marry me- I hardly knew him!

Finally the cult leader is being exposed. I do not feel like going into all the details because what goes around comes around and Mr. Guen, a man of exemplary poor character, will receive the results of his actions like the rest of us.

In my case I am amazed at how I got sucked into the group for a few years — even when he boasted about his sexual exploits among his students many of whom were previously abused women!! Looking back on it, I can see how I was wanting to learn so badly that I blinded myself to the manipulation and abuse that are daily fare in Guen’s groups. As a man I only got to see his financial predatory nature and having me do his errands occasionally, since that kind of activity was beneath him. I saw very poor people working for nothing doing his chores 20 hours a week just so they could attend an hour class. The most amazing thing was how long it took me to leave with all of this clearly going on. Can only blame myself here.

It is a good lesson of how cults work — they require blind sheep and a “master.” I cannot imagine the people who most need to read these accounts actually reading them BUT one can hope that some do and come to their senses.

For me it was a bitter lesson about my gullibility and others exploiting it but others REALLY got taken to the cleaners. My heart goes out to the couple who paid 3k a month for many, many years to support Guen and his sexual/financial exploits. The woman had a crush on him (I have no data that it was any more than this) and convinced her husband to pay the $$ each month. Guen treated both of them with contempt on and off, both in front of them and behind their backs. The poor woman at one time thought that working with Guen saved their marriage. Maybe it had. I ran into the two of them in the market a few years after I left the cult and I had never seen them so radiant — I mean really radiant. They told me that they had stopped seeing Guen for a couple of years. It showed.

Guen, like all predators, preys on people’s ignorance and emotional weak spots. How many people know how to evaluate an acupuncturist? After I went to a real acupuncturist I then realized how callous and uncaring Guen was about my health. It was a shock. THEN I discovered when I showed my acupuncturist, who was trained in qi gong, the so-called ba gua (not the yin fu form) that I was taught he laughed and said these were elementary qi gong exercises. So Guen was charging hundred+ of dollars an hour — over years – -to teach something one could learn in a weekend workshop for $150. I could go on and on but if you read these posts you know enough. All I can say is that it is more rotten than you could imagine.

The dude will pay the karmic debt as we all will. I check in on him every year or so because I figured the shit was going to hit the fan for him eventually. Now it is starting. Just be glad you are not Michael Guen, the short man with the character level of an ant and a rap that the devil would die for.

My experience with Mr Guen was many years ago. I met him thru one of his devoted followers for an acupuncture session. One thing I will never forget is how he told me very personal information about more than one of his followers, as one would talk “dirt” behind someone’s back. Now why would a professional acupuncturist feel the need to talk about a client to another client? The answer I come up with is that it’s all about manipulation. To make a long story short, he proceeded to attempt to seduce me. It didn’t work. I resisted every physical advance.
Emotionally, he manipulates and undermines your self confidence, causing one to think you need him to guide you to be your best self. Which is completely the opposite of the truth. You need to have control over yourself to be your best self. “Know Thyself” is key. How can one know oneself with Michael Guen getting in there with his mind control? You are simply an extension of his will.
Thankfully in my case I wasted very little time and money on this pretentious predator. He doesn’t have a license to practice psychology, but calls himself a “psychologist.” Unless you obtain a license, you cannot practice. It’s like going to law school, but never passing the bar exam. You cannot legally practice without a license.
I wish all the people who are still under his control could come to their senses~ it’s never too late! Even if you grieve over the time and money lost~ still better to get out and enjoy the rest of your life in true freedom.